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TELEPRESENCE ART
Traditionally, telecommunications has involved the transmission, reception, and exchange of sound, images, and text. But in the last fifteen years it has acquired an altogether new dimension: telepresence, or the ability to produce action at a distance. Connecting robots to telecom networks enables those networks to act as vehicles for remote agency; artworks that use this technology explore the drama of distance, that is, they investigate the implications of being present in one space while simultaneously exerting perceptible physical influence in another.
Telepresence art preceded the development
of the Web, but now it is coevolving with it, as exemplified by the work
of artists such as Ken Goldberg ( www.ken.goldberg.net
) and ( Eric Paulos www.eiu.org
). The Internet offers telepresence both a broader context and a wider
audience.
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Vectorial Elevation, 19992000
www.alzado.net
Realized on the Internet and in the sky above the
Zócalo, or central square, in Mexico City, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's
Vectorial Elevation enabled viewers to manipulate the light patterns
created by eighteen strategically placed searchlights. The piece's monumental
scale effectively bridged the public space of the town square and the public
cyberspace of the Internet.
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Thundervolt, 1994
www.fourchambers.org
/artown_gc_thundervolt.asp
For this work, Gene Cooper, an installation and
performance artist, linked the electrical system of his body to that of
the earth. Real-time data recording lightning strikes around the United
States were relayed to his computer in Telluride, Colorado, via the National
Lightning Detection Network. The strikes registered onscreen were translated
into electrical signals, triggering muscles to twitch in Cooper's body
through a series of transcutaneous electro-neuro stimulators.
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Stock Market Skirt, 1998
www.bccc.com/nancy/skirt.html
Nancy Paterson's Stock Market Skirt played
with the myth that skirt length is an economic indicator: the better the
economy, the shorter the skirt. A party dress made of blue taffeta and
black velvet was displayed on a dressmaker's mannequin online, via Web
cam; its hemline rose and fell according to up-to-the-minute data provided
by computers monitoring the fluctuation of stock pricesóthus making a Wall
Street boom the indisputable cause of the micromini.
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Bowling Alley, 199596
bowlingalley.walkerart.org
Shu Lea Cheang's installation spanned not only the
Web but two "real world" sitesóa gallery in the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
and a bowling alley several miles away. The actions of participating bowlers
at the alley controlled an enormous video display in the museum on which
were projected pictures of the bowlers (friends of the artist) and text
from their earlier e-mail correspondence with her. The images changed according
to the velocity of the ball and its course down the laneóa strike for populist
art?
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Bump, 19972000
www.bump.at
For Bump, the Austro-Hungarian artist collective
Association Creation virtually linked two footbridges made of wooden boardsóone
in Linz and one in Budapest. When a person stepped onto the bridge in Linz,
his or her weight caused the corresponding plank to rise about a centimeter
in Budapest, and vice versa, by means of a data line connecting pneumatic
pistons on both ends. This remote force-feedback loop created a dynamic
form of communication, inviting pedestrians to make an impression miles
away with a single, everyday movement.
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Light on the Net, 1996
light.softopia.pref.gifu.jp
In Masaki Fujihata's simple Web interface, a grid
depicting forty-nine tiny lightbulbs, viewers can click on the bulbs to
turn their real counterparts on and off in the lobby of a Japanese office
building. This whimsical work conflates object (bulbs) and information
(light data) and gives you credit for your workóswitch on a light and your
computer's ID appears under "Recent 10 Accesses."
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